Into the Light
by aftersh0cks
Summary: Enjolras wakes next to Grantaire in the Cafe Musain, though he does not remember falling asleep.


Enjolras wakes in the Café Musain.

It's odd, because he doesn't remember falling asleep in the Musain. He doesn't remember falling asleep at all.

_Short memory lapse,_ he assures himself, and sits up, feeling stiff and shaky as he does so. There's a slight pain in his chest but not enough for him to be concerned. To be fair, there's also a pain in his neck, on his arm … in fact, about eight spots on his body. He turns.

Grantaire's sleeping as well, but that comes as no surprise to Enjolras.

His eyes adjust to the dimness of the room and he sees all his friends, sitting on the other side of the Musain, smiling sadly at him. He stands, rubbing his neck, and his fingers pass over a rough bump. Much like a scar.

Very much like a scar.

He doesn't remember ever getting a scar there.

Enjolras takes one step to his friends when Grantaire wakes up, gasping for air. "Grantaire?" he says, leaning towards the shorter man. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

Grantaire sits up slowly, rubbing his head. "My head hurts."

"Hangover," guesses Enjolras. He holds out a hand to help Grantaire up, and Grantaire takes it, springing up. He's shaky on his feet as well. The two walk over to the table in the corner; Joly looks worried, and Jehan looks melancholy.

"We were hoping you wouldn't make it here," Courfeyrac greets him.

"Courfeyrac, what hap—" Enjolras begins, and then it hits him at about the same time he sees it hit Grantaire. The barricades. The fighting. Bahorel stabbed, Jehan shot, Courfeyrac smiling as he dies, and what Enjolras didn't see because he was fighting.

The barricades.

"Oh, God," Grantaire gasps beside him. Enjolras turns and meets his eyes and suddenly his head erupts with pain—

_"Shoot me." _

—and memories blaze through his mind, faster than Enjolras can stop, more realistic than he wants to remember it as—

_"I feel as if I were to shoot a flower."_

—Courfeyrac and Combeferre are beside him, holding him, and his head must be splitting down the middle, that's the only explaination, and Combeferre is saying, "It's hard, but it'll be over in a minute—"

_"Long live the republic! I'm one of them."_

And Grantaire, Grantaire has Joly and Bossuet on him—

"It's all right, Enjolras. You're safe now." Courfeyrac's voice is dim, so dim, and he barely hears it through the rush of what he remembers, what he remembers of those moments—those _final _moments of the twenty-six years of his life.

_"Do you permit it?" And there's a smile, and another smile, and two hands joined into one, and pain, and the sound of guns firing—_

And slowly, yet all at once, the pain subsides, disappearing like it had never been there except for the aftershocks of the headache. Combeferre kisses him gently on the forehead. "It's okay. It's okay."

Enjolras must be sweating. He lifts a hand to his head weakly and runs it down his neck, feeling for the scar that was there before—a scar that must have been made by the bullets, but is gone now. It's gone. "I'm dead," he says weakly, trying and failing to believe it. "They shot us. The National Guard shot Grantaire and I."

_"Might as well finish us both at once. Do you permit it?" _

The pain comes back for a split second, but that split second is enough to make Enjolras cry out and his hands fly to his head again. Combeferre reaches to hold him again, but the pain is gone before Enjolras was even sure it was there, and Grantaire says weakly, "Enjolras?"

What ensues next is an outburst that is violent enough to surprise even Enjolras. "You're so fucking _stupid, _Grantaire!" And though Enjolras can tell that everyone in the Musain is taken aback by Enjolras' use of language, he cannot bring himself to care.

"What did I do?"

"You—"

_"Do you permit it?"_

"—died!"

Enjolras manages to get off the floor, his head still throbbing, and ignores everyone around him, speaking to the man in front of him, unshaven and hair all askew and red waistcoat unbuttoned, for once without a bottle in hand. "Grantaire, you could have hidden where you slept. You slept through the entire battle; surely you could have waited five more minutes to move. You could have lived. You have a sister and a mother and a father mourning you. You did not have to die, Grantaire. Why did you?"

"I couldn't live without you."

The words fall from Grantaire's lips like leaves from a tree, and the words seem to have a calming effect on Enjolras, who pulls up a chair and sits down, trying to comprehend.

He's dead.

Grantaire's dead.

All the boys he loved—all the boys he struggled to keep alive till the very end, these stubborn, proud boys—are dead.

The thought of it brings a less intense ache to his head; it's more of an ache of sadness, hollowness, knowing Enjolras will never be back in his own world, knowing none of his boys will see their loved ones for a long while.

"I failed you by dying, did I not?" says Grantaire, taking the chair beside him. "I knew it. I knew I would fail you again." Grantaire makes to get up, but Enjolras clasps his shoulder.

"Grantaire," he says softly, "you have never failed me. I have failed you." And then to everyone else, he continues, "I have failed all of you. I've taken you away from your families and lovers and mistresses and it is a guilt that will haunt me forever, and I cannot express how sorry I am for leading you towards certain death."

No one can deny it, but Courfeyrac is the first to gently touch Enjolras' shoulder. "You've not taken any of us away from each other, Enjolras."

It's barely a comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. Enjolras nods and in front of them a silence stretches for minutes, until Joly smiles. "Enough mourning for us and the people we love. The longer our families have before they are with us, the better, but it is inevitable, and we will see them once more. Until then, would anyone enjoy a game of cribbage and a drink?"

Grantaire is the first to volunteer; eventually everyone else joins in, resuming their pastimes with merry chatter that for the most part avoids the ordeal the nine of them have been through. Maybe they will talk about it later, but for now putting it out of mind seems like one of the better things to do.

Enjolras ends up joining Grantaire as he plays, sneaking a look at his cards as he sits down.

"Better lay down the seven," he tells Grantaire.

"I didn't know you knew how to play crib."

"I do not know, actually."

"I shall teach you, then." Grantaire starts explaining the rules of the game to him, and Enjolras can't help but smile sadly as he does. He is reminiscing, thinking about the world they left behind and the world they are in now, about republics and monarchies and proud revolutionaries.

Enjolras decides how he went was not such a bad way to go, and is the last to put it out of his mind, but joins the games nonetheless.


End file.
